Windows Phone Thoughts: xD Picks Up Support

"Memory developers Lexar Media and SanDisk have agreed to sell the emerging xD-Picture Card, a removable flash memory card format that's gaining traction by riding on the popularity of digital cameras. Lexar Media and SanDisk on Monday separately announced that they will support the xD-Picture Card format, which was developed and is owned by Olympus Optical, FujiFilm and Toshiba. The format was introduced in the fourth quarter of last year and has gained modest ground due to the amount of digital cameras sold by Olympus and FujiFilm, according to Chris Chute, an analyst with research firm IDC. Digital cameras use removable flash memory to store digital photos."

Argh! :evil: xD is the one format worse than Memory Stick, in my opinion. I for one will studiously avoid any xD product as long as I can. I have many 6-in-1 readers all over the place, and I'm not interested, in the slightest, in picking up a bunch of 7-in-1 readers, and, in my opinion, the relative lack of them shows the rest of the market's unhappiness at the invention of this format. Quite frankly, this is why the floppy drive is not disappearing -- there are too many incompatible flash formats, and this number is increasing, not decreasing. Thumbs up to most of the Pocket PC OEMs, which have nicely standardized on two formats: CF for the larger components, and SD for the smaller ones. Now, let's see SDIO uniformly implemented in all devices... :way to go: